Flexographic printing involves the use of a flexible printing plate that must first be mounted on a printing cylinder or a cylindrical printing sleeve through the use of sticky back material. The sticky back material is generally a double-sided adhesive sheet that is often packaged as a roll of the sticky back material. Traditionally, the sticky back sheet is mounted to the printing sleeve through manual manipulation of the sheet, the sleeve, and potentially the components used to secure the sleeve within the flexographic printer. An operator may also be required to manually measure and orient the materials when locating the sticky back sheet at a desired position on the sleeve. These manually operated steps often lead to the sticky back sheet being misaligned or improperly applied to the sleeve. Additionally, manual application significantly increases the time and effort required to complete the application process.
One significant problem introduced by manual manipulation and application of the sticky back sheet is that the interface between the sticky back sheet and the printing sleeve may develop air bubbles if the sticky back sheet is not evenly applied. The air bubbles may in turn disturb the flexible printing plate mounted on the sticky back sheet, causing the resultant print quality to suffer. Additionally, manual application of the sticky back material may present health concerns to a person applying the sticky back, including the development of carpal tunnel syndrome in some cases. These limitations may lead to reduced output and an unsatisfactory product.
It would therefore be desirable to have an applicator for sticky back material that automatically cuts a sheet of sticky back material and applies the sheet to a printing sleeve based on data that is input into the applicator prior to operation of the applicator.